first foray...

[almostnormal]

well here they are, a selection of the first photos taken with my fuji finepix s6500fd. once you've picked yourselves off the floor from the giggling hysteria these are bound to cause some pointers would be appreciated!

first one....an unidentified hoverfly i snapped in the garden...



a fuzzy grey wagtail...just after i took this i managed to get unbelievably close to the birdy, but an evil red welly clad child jumped into the water and scared him off....



a common, if slightly blurry, dog violet...macro modes are quite hard....



a very obliging bumblebee. it stayed put on this flowering currant for ages....



and finally some pretty blackthorn blossom





so no laughing but what would you suggest for improvements photography experts? or even people who have been doing wildlife photography for longer than a week?

[wildlifesnapper]

Hi there,

well I'm not giggling , we all have to start and I love the bee photo.

There are two points I can think of.

First is make sure you get the subject in focus.The hoverfly is unsharp.If you can't get it all in focus go for the eyes.

The other is to keep an eye on the fore and background.It's so easy for a piece of out of focus piece of grass in the foreground (as in the violet photo) to spoil what would otherwise be a good shot. Also a big killer of photos is the bright dead grass or leaves etc in the background.It's easy to be so involved with the subject that you just don't "see" what else is in the frame.

Hope that helps.

Neil

[agrumpycow]

I'd agree with Neil on both points. The bee pic is really good. The blackthorn pic would have been better if a flower had been in the centre to focus on rather than the stem.
Great pics tho, for first attempts with a new camera, it took me ages to get to grips with macro and I take duff photos often even now after a year , good photo editing programs on my puter help me make the bad shots into 'not quite so' bad shots!

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by agrumpycow

and I take duff photos often even now after a year ....

hey I take duff photos after about 8 years and with several grand invested in kit - I reckon my hit rate (ie photos that are keepers) is about 5%

top pro wildlife photographer Andy Rouse once told me that prior to going digital he was happy to get one good photo from a roll of 36

[almostnormal]

thanks very much for the help guys...the bee is my favourite as well. as i said it stayed put for ages. long enough to rally focus the camera properly!

i have since had a bit of flick through to see how i can improve the focus, but it appears that its going to take me a while! i didn't really notice the little problemettes, but have taken note. when i'm out this week any grass or leaves in the way will be removed from the photo.

its encouraging to know everyone has duff shots now and then!